Well, folks, in the wake of this disastrous election, the year 2012 cannot end too soon. But, as it winds down, it is incumbent upon us to ask just what kind of nation we have left, and from just what reservoir of fortitude and courage we conservatives can draw the strength to continue. As the shock of Tuesday night lingered into Wednesday, the depression I experienced reached depths I have rarely known, as did the sheer existential angst and fear, so evident, as well, in various conservative chat rooms and blogs that I visited. We were told so often that this election was the big one, that the fate of the country, perhaps the whole world, was at stake, forever. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But is there truth in the assertion? Yes, certainly some.

This election was, indeed, a big one. And yet, it was a close one. I would like to think that we have all recovered sufficiently to realize that Conservatism did not die. Not yet. Obama certainly has no mandate, though he pretends to. Whatever can be said of George W. Bush, at least it can be said, and often has been said, that the first thing he did, after his own slender election, was to recognize the country's division and to extend his hand across the aisle. Of course, they bit it off. How well I recall Ted Kennedy gutting his education bill, and the grand bipartisan effort to reform Social Security, assisted by Moynihan, which lesser men ridiculed and subverted. Bush tried twice, or was it three times, to reign in Fanny and Freddie, giving the lie to Obamas false claims that "Bush caused the economic crisis," a falsehood which rests primarily upon a rejection of the Democrats' role in causing the economic crisis. But, they had a big role. Similarly, the bailout of GM that Obama loves to take credit for was actually initiated by President Bush; the trouble with it (other than the fact of it) is that he took it in a different direction, helping unions and shafting non-union Delphi employees, while nationalizing the company to an unprecedented extent. And, if there were excessive encroachments upon freedom in the Patriot Act in the wake of 9/11, they seem to pale in comparison to the insidious designs of our current "executive order" White House occupant, who essentially finds Congress irrelevant (e.g. HHS mandates on abortion, the gutting of Welfare, and just about everything the EPA does these days, from land grabs and water confiscations out West, to the innumerable regulations on business . . . well, just talk to any coal miner trying to put food on the table for his family). Our beloved emperor has issued 923 executive orders in three and a half years, up from Bushs 62 in eight years. And this he did with a Congress he fully controlled for the first two of those years! So much for checks and balances. Montesquieu, anyone?

I have heard the liberal argument that the huge numbers of people on foodstamps, and on welfare, will drop as unemployment drops. But, unemployment has been near 8% or above for four long years. Obama doesn't even meet with the job council he created! It's all for show. And, as for unemployment, the real rate is 15%. The long-tern rate is 22% (the long-term unemployment rate rose to 40.6% in October from 40.1%, i.e. the percentage of the unemployed lasting for 27 consecutive weeks or longer). Millions work part-time without benefits who used to work full-time with benefits. Meanwhile, the first two days after the election, the market dropped 400 points. Thousands off people have been laid off just since Tuesday. Companies are considering thousands more, either because of tax policy or because of Obamacare (or both, considering the draconian penalties in Obamacare on business). A coal company in West Virginia yesterday laid off 150 people. Another in Utah laid off 100. Stryker, a medical device company being taxed under Obamacare, (and a stock in my retirement fund) is eliminating 1,170 positions. Dana Holding, an auto parts company, is laying of 25,000 people worldwide. Boston Scientific 1,400. Medtronic 1,000. AMD 400. Cigna 1,300. Countless others. Lockheed Martin may lay off 123,000 people! And Obamacare could result in tens of thousands of employees being limited to working 28 hours per week as companies avoid penalties. The new norm, I guess.

I have heard liberals ridicule the conservative argument that this election was, as Rush Limbaugh says, about Santa Claus. Free stuff. Well, I ridicule their ridicule. Did you all get your free Obamaphones?! Better hurry! The supply is limited . . . or is it? Obama is the most socialist-minded person we have ever had in the White House. And what is the basis of this socialist mentality? No, it's not the common welfare; it is the concept of Entitlement and government dependence. Food stamps, Obamacare, class warfare . . . When Obama said today so defiantly (far from working together with people, as he ought), that "a majority of Americans agree with my approach," I wanted to scream at the radio, "Not a majority of working Americans!" Screw Obama! Here we have a guy who won by a mere 300,000 (legal?) votes across four states, and by a slim 2.5% nationally. But we now live in a society where those who don't work can vote themselves the wealth of those who do  and all so that we can pay for Sandra Fluke's contraceptives. But that is the vote they are encouraged to make. What else do you think Obama meant by "revenge"?! He hates this country, and by that, I mean that he hates the work ethic of this country. Of course, those responsible for the reelection of his excellency dont care at all because it does not affect most of them. Obama has gutted Welfare to Work requirements (yes, he has), which along with efforts by the National Labor Relations Board to force unionization on the American workforce and the disincentives to work in Obamacare (I'd be covered if I quit my job) merely serve to make people more and more dependent upon government, which is what Democrats want. It's about power. Theirs. And, ultimately, that kind of Statism has, yes, the tendency to become totalitarian. So, Obama ran his campaign based on giving stuff for free, from birth control to mortgage relief and student loan bailouts to free food and free medical care and who knows what all else, all while painting Romney as the Grinch who wouldn't give you the free stuff.

It's ironic, of course, that I will actually lose my own healthcare. You see, I have inexpensive catastrophic, which will be outlawed. And I cannot afford the expensive plans Obamacare will offer. I have researched this. Just remember me when they come after my house, my bank account, my possessions, because I will never, ever pay the penalty ascribed by the mandate. Never! I will die a free man! [Oh, that's right, the IRS said last month that they would not come after people. How reassuring!]. When liberals dispute that this election was about Santa Claus, their sense of entitlement to free stuff, remember that it is Obama, after all, who has played the class warfare card so relentlessly. Its our turn. Working people vs. Freeloaders. If I am to be called a "freeloader" for not buying insurance that I am forced to buy and yet can't afford, and then penalized for it, I feel perfectly comfortable using the term "freeloader" for anyone who lives off of the taxes I pay.

Hell, if the dead can vote (I am avoiding the subject of voter fraud), they can eat, too. I happen to be someone who had his identity stolen at the IRS (identity thefts of social security numbers are up 10-fold under Obama), and I shook my head in disbelief upon learning that 1,500 fraudulent refunds went to one address in Michigan, alone, 900 to another address in Chicago, 700 to each of two other addresses in Florida. No, these were not nursing homes. And that's just last year. Just another example of our wonderfully corrupt government at work. (By the way, $120 million in FEMA money for Hurricane Sandy victims just disappeared. Maybe they'll find it with the $900 million they lost on Solyndra).

I have heard liberals argue that the conservative media is maintaining the divisiveness in our country. Its our extremism, and our hatred for Obama. But no, the source of divisiveness lies elsewhere. Oh sure, there are the nuts, reactionaries, troglodytes, but they are not the mainstream of the Conservative majority (I say majority because, plainly, we did not get our vote out). It is not Mitt Romney who ran such a disgustingly divisive campaign of personal destruction and class warfare. His campaign argued for jobs, for tax reform, for various economic policies, and was in many respects All-American, and uplifting. Even the ads run by Karl Rove and his people were relatively tame . . . I watched them all; the toughest were on Libya. But accusations of felon, murderer, tax cheat, attacks upon Ann Romney's horse (her therapy for multiple sclerosis), continued lies about Romney tax hikes in the face of fact-checkers, and ads comparing voting for Obama to having sex for the first time? (Gee, no wonder he won the single women's vote). Please. it was all very sleazy. And divisive. And all done with the help of the maintream Media, our very own Pravda, which were all so obviously in the tank for Obama, who remains the least vetted occupant of the White House that we have ever had (I won't call him president) . . . all to the extent that I was frightened by the sheer volume of it, frightened for my country. It is no less troubling when one Googles anything these days and receives a preponderance of links to liberal web sites. None dare call it conspiracy. But, more to the point, Obama has done nothing but divide, and quite purposefully. The sheer cynicism of his campaign was self-evident. He stood for nothing. And cynicim can claim no mandate. No, not for anything. Let alone that the most influential men in Obamas life are Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Franklin Davis Marshal, if we hate him, it is not for those associations, nor for his supposed accidents of birth or undisclosed mysteries about his early life. No, it is because of his actions! He is driving this country, ever so insidiously, in a direction we do not, and cannot, accept! And whatever you think of the Romney campaign, Mitt Romney is a very fine man. And I spit on Obama's treatment of him. Remember that Obama is a man whose political guru, Saul Alinsky, once wrote In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt. I recall no apologies at all. As for Pravda, now that the election is over, they suddenly seem to have discovered Benghazi! Lo and behold! Maybe they will also suddenly discover our unfunded $55 Trillion debt liability. No, I guess not; that won't drive ratings.

I have also heard people, conservatives, talking about Impeachment. Oh, why bother, with a Senate led by a man who does a good imitation of pond scum? But, Benghazi alone would be sufficient. What matters more, is what we do to save ourselves from him. Civil disobedience is one thing. I will be engaging in it quite consciously when I refuse to pay the Obamacare mandate. But, a nation divided cannot stand, and I worry about real violence. Civil wars start in little ways. And I, like so many conservatives, am sick and tired of attacks upon Republicans, and I do mean physical attacks. Unions caught ripping up yard signs, or pissing on them, bricks thrown and gunshots fired into local Republican offices ( I can supply a long list that goes back 30 years, everything from OWS violence  7,696 Occupy arrests to date  to Tea party activists beaten up by SEIU thugs). Ann Coulter reminds us of the criminal actions of Obama supporters four years ago: some who Mace'd elderly volunteers in a McCain campaign office in Galax, Va., others who threw Molotov cocktails at McCain signs on families' front yards in and around Portland, Ore., another Obama supporter who broke a McCain sign being held by a small middle-aged woman in midtown Manhattan before hitting her in the face with the stick. Then there were the union thugs who threw bricks at buses full of Boy Scouts. This year, let alone that there was an explosion of death threats against Mitt Romney in the last two weeks of the campaign, there he was, our friendly New Black Panther thug standing in front of the same polling place in Philadelphia (thank you, Attorney General Eric Holder). In Virginia, a Romney supporter watched in horror as someone literally torched her Romney/Ryan yard sign. In Florida a WWII veteran had his Romney sign AND his American Flag torched and burned. In Wisconsin, an openly gay Republican campaign volunteer was sent to the hospital by some Leftist nut who labeled him a "traitor," and the son of a Republican State Senator was badly beaten when he attempted to stop people from stealing his own Romney yard sign. The Solipsim of the Left seems to know no bounds of decency. Hell! Yesterday a dead pig wrapped in a Mitt Romney t-shirt was found dumped at the South Bay Republican Party campaign office in Florida. As far as I can tell, most Democrats are wild animals. But, then, Marxists always end up in violence. They rely on violence. Its the Alinsky way. One can only conclude that the politics of the contemporary Left is absolutely intertwined with either tacit or overt support for violence. Meanwhile, on the Right, either from fears about the 2nd Amendment or from fear, itself, gun sales are up . . . way up. I am not surprised.

You know, if Obama wants us to believe that he is not Hugo Chavez, maybe he should quit kissing up to him. But, Obama does all he can to fan our fears. Can we ever win an election, again? Yes! Believe it! Should we diversify in the direction of Hispanics? Perhaps. But, isnt it an irony that all of the individual up-by-bootstraps, hard-working Hispanic success stories are Republican (Rubio, Martinez, Fortuno, Sandoval . . .)? Add to them the hard-luck African-American success stories of Condoleeza Rice, Allen West, Mia Love. But, hard work is not what the entitlement class wants. Still, we did not lose by much, my friends. And we are a big tent, already, conservatives and moderates, big enough to win, with far fewer differences among ourselves than what we have with the other party. We should be wary of extremes, but not of principles, traditional values, time-tested truths we keep coming back and back to. Nor, on social issues, should it ever be said that the moral life and behavior of a people is beyond the purview or legitimate interest of government. That is the position only of Libertarians. George F. Will pointed out, for example, that when Roe v. Wade put the stamp of approval on abortion, it unwittingly encouraged it, and to the extent that other restrictive measures had to come to bear. The argument is in the details, when and how to restrict, and where, but since 1973 there have been 50 million legally induced abortions in the U.S. alone. Limiting that is only common sense, let alone an imperative for those of us who believe in the sanctity of life. And let us not forget that there was something else at stake in this election: religious freedom, which the Obama administration is doing its best to destroy. It's contest with the Church over the next few years will be titanic.

No one can seriously argue that the concept of expansive socialism and far-reaching entitlement were ever a component of the founding doctrine of these United States (excuse my Southerner's use of "these"). The Founding Fathers are just dead white guys to some, I suppose. But not to me. Not to us. Yes, times change, but I prefer JFK's call for America to the new cry of "What will my country and government do for me? What am I entitled to?" And that is, indeed, the new cry. We must answer it with a cry of our own, the cry of liberty, the cry of an eagle snatching in its claws the American flag from the grip of those who would trample upon it, asserting that this is, still, the land of the free, and proving once again that this is, God-willing, the home of the brave.

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